While this has sent some Star Wars fans into euphoria about another trilogy of films, others do worry. Will Star Wars be star wars without George Lucas at the helm? Although he is penciled in as a creative consultant it is unclear what direction the new films will take the Star Wars franchise.

Some fans may well hope that the films take on the post-Endor story line as covered in the Timothy Zahn novels (Thrawn Trilogy or the Dark Empire novels). Already, I suspect some fans are speculating about who will play Mara Jade (Luke Skywalkers future missus). However, these novels are probably a little too dark for the Disney company and younger audiences, so its possible they may try and reboot the franchise with a new film. That will probably be not to the liking of fans, no more than the whole business of Stallone taking his helmet off in Judge Dredd. Alienating the fans could easily kill the franchise.

Also there is the commercialism. Many fans felt that Lucasfilm overplayed that with the new films way too much (or indeed with Return of the Jedi). Indeed interesting aside, Fox had such little faith in star wars that they signed over most of the merchandising rights to Lucas….was this the same exec who cancelled Star Trek by any chance?

When the digitally re-mastered version was released, some fans just groaned a little, but they were outraged by it when they realised that GL had altered the critical confrontation when Hans Solo shot Greedo (the funny looking alien bounty hunter he shoots in the Cantina). The new version has Greetoshooting first. GLs position is that he was trying to emphasis that Hans had no choice but to shoot Greedo. Fans say that he’s lays it on way too thick and is tinkering with a movie classic. The cultural equivlent of drawing a smily face on the Scream.

Anyway, it now seems he’s at it again. A key scene in which Darth previously remained silent, now the Blue-Ray disk version has Darth Vader screaming like a sissy girl. Naturally the fans are appalled at this turn of events.

My take? Well I know what I saw when I saw the film the first time and thats what counts. And I’ve a copy of both the original and re-mastered at home so GL can ruin the film to his hearts content, I’ll just not be buying a copy of that Blue-Ray disk. What Im not going to do is put on a tinfoil hat.

What I will say is that there’s now a huge amount of “fan fiction” out there and thus fandom has moved well beyond that of the original film.

Update!
Also I would note that there is nothing strange about an artish returning to a work and producing several versions of it. There are for example multiple versions of “the Scream” and Van Gogh’s “sunflowers“. What is uncalled for, is George Lucas attempt to rewrite history and suppress the previous versions of his work. I mean he could make a ton of money if he was smart selling the alternative versions of the SW Hexalogy to fans and Blue-ray provides the perfect means for him to do it. Although I do understand his desire to suppress all knowledge of the “star wars holiday special” :oops:. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to see it you’ll understand where he’s coming from. I include a link to it here, but with a health warning, it really is very, very bad, and I mean bad enough to make people ill, so don’t blame me (or GL) if you’re foolish enough to click on the link above.